‘Private medical colleges benefiting from govt admission delays’

Pakistan Medical and Dental Council “deliberately” delays entry tests to govt colleges.

KARACHI: The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council is “deliberately” delaying entry tests to government colleges so that private colleges can take advantage of worried students, alleged Professor Dr Shershah Syed, who is a Sindh member of the PMDC, on Wednesday.

“First they charge for the admission form, then for sitting in the exam and then take bulky non-refundable fees,” said Dr Shershah at a press conference.

He pointed that if private medical college admissions are opened before government college admissions, panicked students, even those who stand a chance of getting into government institutions, will apply as a precaution. “Worried students actually pressure their parents to complete all the formalities of admission to a private college in case they fail to appear on the government college list,” he said.

The system should model the Punjab’s where one exam is held for all private and government colleges unlike in Sindh where each private college gets to make a lot of money in its isolated process of admission.

The decision to delay government admissions, he said, is taken by the PMDC. It is a registered body that regulates medical education and medical practices in the country. While its number varies from time to time, at the moment it has more than 100 members across the country. The problem is that the council members are mostly the principals of private medical colleges, who have their own businesses at stake.

DUHS Pro-VC Prof Dr Umer Farooq told The Express Tribune later that the meeting that decided the date for the admissions tests was not attended by representatives of private colleges. He said that the decision was taken at a VCs meeting at Governor House on the request of Prof Dr Sikander Sheikh, the VC of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Hospital, due to floods in his area. He said that according to Sindh’s policy, medical exams in all five centers of Karachi, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Larkana and Sukkur are held on the same date under the same authority to prevent candidates from using two seats.

At a time when thousands of students are competing for a few MBBS seats in government colleges, Dr Shershah also criticised the formation of 12 new medical and dental colleges in the country.  Dr Shershah Syed said that doctors are extremely concerned about the recent steps taken by the PMDC to recognise another twelve medical and dental colleges without proper buildings, facilities and faculty. He alleged that these institutes are just trying to make money and will produce incompetent doctors.

“I have no issues with new medical colleges if they are in agreement with the laws and rules of the PMDC,” he said. He gave the examples of colleges planned in Lyari, Sialkot, Hyderabad and Faisalabad among others.

Other recognised colleges such as Ziauddin Medical College, the newly approved Sharif Medical College in Lahore and even Dow Medical College continue to lack complete medical facilities.

DUHS Pro-VC Prof Dr Umer Farooq added that private medical colleges had increased their fees by thousands of rupees without any reason and in violation of PMDC rules. Not only is there no mechanism to control this sudden rise but the PMDC has been silent. “There are a handful of the doctors who are destroying the medical profession for their own vested interests of making money,” he said.

He and Dr Habibur Rehman Soomro, the secretary general of the Pakistan Medical Association, recommended the following three steps: Reconstitution of the PMDC by the Supreme Court; a complete moratorium on the establishment of new medical and dental colleges according to the recommendations of a Senate Committee report on medical education in Pakistan and transparency in the working of the PMDC and merit.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 23^rd, 2010.